Monday, May 21, 2007

Coconut and White Chocolate Mud Cake

Tara from Seven Spoons is this month's host of Sugar High Friday and she chose a most interesting theme - a quest to taste the many Shades of White.

I took this as a perfect opportunity to make a cake from AWW's Cakes, Biscuits and Slices cookbook that I've had my eye on for a while. It's a white chocolate mud cake that's smothered in a coconut and white chocolate ganache but to make it even whiter, I've then topped it with shards of flaked coconut.

Preheat the oven to 170°C/340°F.Line and grease a 22cm/9inch cake pan - a spring-form or loose-bottomed type pan is best.

Make Cake:Place the butter, lemon zest, white chocolate, sugar and milk into a medium saucepan that is over a low heat - stir until the chocolate has melted and the mixture is smooth. Set this aside to cool for about 15 minutes.

Sift the flours together and place into a bowl - stir in the cooled chocolate mixture followed by the lightly beaten eggs, mixing until combined and smooth.

Pour this into the prepared pan and back for about 1 hour 40 minutes or until cooked through. If the cake looks to be browning too quickly then cover with foil.

Let the cake cool in the pan.

Make Ganache:

Place the coconut cream into a small saucepan and bring to just below boiling point - remove from the heat and add the chocolate, stirring well to help dissolve the chocolate. You may find you'll need to put this back on the stove, use a low heat and remove as soon as the mixture is smooth.

Pour this out into a bowl and place in the fridge - keep stirring occasionally as it cools and remove as soon as it reaches a spreadable consistency.

Assemble Cake:

Remove the cake from the pan and place on your serving dish.Spread the ganache evenly over the cake before applying a generous coating of flaked coconut.

Hi Haalo, What a divine looking cake! I can imagine how good this tastes especially with the ganache made from coconut cream. What a splendid idea. I will have to try baking this cake soon, but did you find that 330g of sugar was too much for cake recipe?

Hi Carol - it does sound like a lot of sugar but I didn't find it overly sweet, I suppose you could experiment and use less - I would add that the type of white chocolate used would also effect the final taste.